Nicaraguan justice sent former private sector president José Adán Aguerri home to prison this Thursday to serve the 13-year sentence imposed by a Managua judge for the crime of “treason against the country.”
According to an official media, Aguerri had health problems, for which his lawyer requested a change of precautionary measure to a judge. The ruling would have been guided by a court of law.
Aguerri was arrested in June 2021, like another group of opponents, prior to the general elections of that year, where President Daniel Ortega won a new mandate.
After the conviction on March 3, Aguerri remained imprisoned in the maximum security prison known as El Chipote, in Managua, where relatives claimed that he was in inhumane conditions, like the rest of the detainees.
In El Chipote there are other leaders critical of Ortega, such as Michael Helly, who assumed the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), after Aguerri’s term expired; and the vice president of that union, Álvaro Vargas.
Ortega has accused businessmen and other civil society groups of trying to stage a coup in 2018, when violent protests erupted, which were repressed with violence, leaving more than 300 dead and thousands injured and exiled.
Human rights organizations, as well as the international community, have asked Ortega “to end the repression” and to release all “political prisoners”, including seven presidential hopefuls detained in 2021.
Given Ortega’s refusal, the United States, the European Union and allies have imposed sanctions against the president’s circle “for human rights violations.”
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